Introduction to Turenscape
Last week in Seattle I had the pleasure of attending the “Next Eco-City” symposium hosted by the University of Washington. The symposium, which took place downtown in Rem Koolhaus’ Seattle Public Library, was a daylong event broken into three sessions – Emergent Ecologies, Emergent Cities, and Emergent Tactics – and was kicked off the evening before with three presentations and a panel discussion centered on the ecological implications of urbanization. Each of the symposium speakers maintains a sturdy balance between academia and practice and each are using their unique positions in this regard to invoke change in the built environment across the realms of academia, policy, and practice. For a list of the speakers and topics, check out the symposium outline via the link above.
I would like to take a moment to spotlight the work of Dr. Knogjian Yu and his 600-person, China-based firm, Turenscape. I focus in on Dr. Yu not to take attention off of the great work of each of the other speakers, but only because his work at this moment hits closest to home with the China-based design work I am currently involved in with our HOK Seattle studio.
Daniel S. Friedman, FAIA, Dean of the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington, set the scene powerfully with his query into the ability of crisis to catalyze otherwise overdue change in a system or process, in this case the currently destructive nature of urban development. Dr. Yu picked up on this idea in his keynote presentation where he outlined the ways in which crisis is bubbling to the surface of our reality. In the case of China, crisis is seen through the expansion of the city and its disregard for farmland and cultural heritage.
The solution? As Professor Karen Seto of Yale University, puts it, “the geographies of urbanization require a reconceptualization of sustainability.” And how do we do this? Dr. Yu would answer that we must, through design and policy, provide cultural and natural services in the development of an ecological infrastructure. This can be achieved through what Dr. Yu defines as “reverse planning” and in “developing a new aesthetic.” We must reverse what has been to date a destructive conversion of productive landscapes to ornamental landscapes. We must spread as a cultural meme a new aesthetic that incentivizes the design of productive environments. Dr. Yu could not overemphasize the power of influencing policy and shared with us his success in this venture as conveyed in one of his books “Road to Urban Landscape: Talk to the Mayors.”
The profundity of Dr. Yu’s ideas is conveyed most directly through the work of his firm, work that falls both in the realm of the conceptual and the realized. His firm is actively providing pioneering case studies that should serve to mentor our profession.
